Top 100 Market Innovator: Briggs Freeman makes real estate world stop and listen

Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty

3131 West Seventh Street

4th Floor

Fort Worth 76107

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817-288-7500

www.briggsfreeman.com/

Fort Worth’s fast-moving, booming, residential real estate market doesn’t stop for much, but it did in late September last year when three major firms announced they were joining forces with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty.

Three Fort Worth-based residential real estate firms with differing pedigrees – Brants Realtors, Mira Vista Realtors and Bloom Real Estate Group – joined with Dallas’ Briggs Freeman to create a new-yet-oh-so-familiar face on the Fort Worth-Tarrant County real estate landscape.

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“I know the two areas are very different, but I know that outside of our area we are known as DFW, and when a corporation moves here, they’re looking at the whole Metroplex. They’re not just looking at one or the other,” Robbie Briggs, CEO and president of Briggs Freeman said at the time.

It was innovative and the timing was right too, as Fort Worth’s residential real estate market, along with that of North Texas has taken off in 2015 and 2016. For longtime Fort Worth real estate executive Clay Brants, the time was right.

“As we looked at economic growth and the companies bringing their headquarters to North Texas, we knew it would help our clients to have exposure across the region,” said Brants, who leads the Fort Worth Ranch and Land office for the new group. “Other brokerages have asked Brants to join them. This is the only offer that made sense to us. We know that our name will be stronger and [more widespread] with this move.”

Adding in the Mira Vista agency gives Briggs Freeman access to one of Fort Worth’s fastest growing areas – Southwest Fort Worth.

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“It’s great to brand yourself with a small, niche neighborhood, because you can kind of own that neighborhood, but it also limits you,” said Briggs. “So by rebranding it, those agents are going to do really well in Mira Vista, but I think it going to really expand their scope.”

Bloom was the newcomer to the group.

“Bloom was an added surprise that I was just shocked at,” he said. “We began talking to them and they got real excited because most of them had left what I would call a traditional real estate company because they really wanted to do something different, and they were very keen on Internet, social marketing and [they’re] just kind of computer savvy younger agents.”

That’s important, Briggs noted, as 48 percent of the company’s web traffic comes from social media, an area where the younger agents excel.

“I look at them. They’re going to energize this whole group, because that’s what we’ve seen in our other offices,” he said.

Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty is the oldest privately held real estate boutique in Dallas, with more than 250 associates in six offices including Dallas, Lakewood, Uptown, The Ballpark and Southlake prior to the September announcement.

Independently owned and operated by Briggs, the firm specializes in real estate transactions with a variety of properties from historic to contemporary, to waterfront, ranch and land. Aside from the many residential properties, the company also offered more complex properties, such as the $725 million historic Wagoner Ranch.

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